


Upper Limits

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [62]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, Gen, M/M, based on art, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23835412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: ARC training pushes troopers to the brink.  Rex wants a hug.
Relationships: CC-1138 | Bacara/CT-7567 | Rex
Series: Soft Wars [62]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 42
Kudos: 450





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't figured out how to link it yet but the incredible Echo of [@dragneel-twins](https://dragneel-twins.tumblr.com/) Made Me A Art of Rex hugging Bacara to give himself a recharge after training and the fic did this thing and so here we are. Twas gonna just be a teeny huggy scene, but then I needed backstory and THEN there was an And Suddenly, Neyo and it became A Thing. Yeah. This train doesn't understand that rails were there to help it.
> 
> ~~I'll update with a link once I figure out what I'm messing up this time~~
> 
> Link to [REXCARA ART](https://dragneel-twins.tumblr.com/post/616385099351670784/just-some-bacara-x-rex-stuff-fluffy-fluffiness)

The course isn’t one meant to be finished, not really. It’s meant to push them to the edge of their endurance, past it, again and again until they drop. Finishing this course isn’t success, it’s deliberately adding to your own pain.

Bacara doesn’t know where the ones pulled off the field are taken, but he has his suspicions. It’s not to rest, that he’s sure of. If he’d been designing something like this, up next would be something cerebral, something you have to force through exhaustion to focus on. Something that would have been, if not simple, then at least manageable were you rested. Hours of that, until words don’t make sense and your eyes don’t focus. After that, something else physical, different muscle groups. Marksmanship, swimming, push-ups, ropes, something. A few rounds of that, mind and body, until they’ve got you good and softened up.

After that. That’s when the questions start. Maybe the physical discomfort. You’ll be hungry by then, tired. They can make sure you’re just a little bit cold too, and the room’s just a little too bright and the chair legs too short, little things. You’ll answer, eventually. The point is to see what it takes to get you to that.

They won’t hit you. That’s not the point, if they beat an answer out of you. No, they’ll set it up so you trip up, volunteer answers you didn’t mean to, just to get a quiet dark moment. You’ll feel like shit for days, after.

It’s a good, traditional break-and-make. The Journeyman Protectors are fond of it; it gives a good indication who’s worth investing training time in. It’s strange that it would come this far into training, when they’ve already spent so much on everyone here. They’ve past the second set of cuts already, losing fewer people this time around. A break-and-make is usually the first cut.

17’s got some spine to him, Bacara thinks. He’d talked himself out of running a break-and-make for his Marines; the point wasn’t to dig for the elite of the elites, it was to bring every man up to Marine standard. Even if it was, Bacara doesn’t know if he has it in him to look a brother in the eye and decide to break him.

They train those Alphas different. The trainers always said they were closer to Mando than the rest of them. Funny thing to mean.

Bacara lost track of time two hours in. There’s only three of them left on the first course, out of the nineteen that started. Which three it is isn’t even a bit of a surprise by now.

Sweat’s glued Neyo’s PT gear to his back and legs and his hair hangs lank and stringy down his neck. Rex’s hair is light enough and buzzed close enough to his scalp that Bacara can see sweat beading on his whole head. They both struggle to keep their breathing steady as they run. Bacara isn’t any better.

His legs went past burning a lifetime ago. He’s choosing to go over or around every obstacle he comes across now: if he gets down to go under he knows he’s not getting his right knee back under him again. He’d fall out, if it was just Neyo. Neyo’s a friend but he’s a right bastard and Bacara would be fine to leave him to take whatever licks he gets.

He won’t leave Rex as the last on the track. The rest of the assessment goes just a bit more poorly, for the last off the track. Whoever that is has something to prove, after all, and they’ll want to tear that out of you first before anything else. Standard break-and-make procedure.

Rex stumbles and for a second Bacara hopes. He doesn’t go down, rights himself on a half-wall and pushes back off, determined.

It figures. Bacara wouldn’t have ever noticed him in the first place if he wasn’t a stubborn little thing.

On they run. Neyo goes down and takes long, long seconds to get back up though only Manda’s little gods know why he bothered. Unlike Rex, he must know what this is about. His trainer was Death Watch; they use break-and-makes more than once during training. Sometimes as punishment too. Sometimes just because. Neyo catches up, shoots Bacara a snarl. Oh, right. _This_ again. Neyo decided today it’s important not to go down before Bacara.

He can have it. Bacara will tap out as soon as he’s sure Rex has.

Neyo catches the look, and his hackles visibly recede once he understands Bacara’s not trying to lay down a challenge. Not trying to prove _better_.

Neyo’s a solid hand to have at your back. It’s just really hard being friends with him sometimes, committing sins like daring to be better at something or appearing more committed. Sometimes Bacara had to wonder: if he’d grown up with even a single other brother after the Journeyman Protectors removed him from the rest, would he have ever become friends with Neyo? Sometimes he thinks not. Managing Neyo is exhausting.

‘ _Trip him_ ’ Neyo signs as they round the bend transitioning into the next leg. Bacara grimaces. He’d thought of it.

‘ _Worse_ ,’ he signs back. ‘ _Angry_.’ He gets the feeling Rex would just be more determined then.

Neyo grins all teeth. ‘Y _our type. Decla-’_ Bacara trips him.

It’s the wall in the next section that finally does Rex in. He’s a handhold from the top when one foot slips free and gives way.

If he falls from this height, it’s a guarantee they’ll be carrying him off. It’s a twelve foot drop. Bacara hops over holds, down one and slams his shoulder under Rex’s thigh.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Rex stammers, high and the edge of shocky.

Bacara grunts, smacks the back of his leg with a closed fist. “Pull yourself up,” he grits. His fingers are sweaty and burn with effort. It’s a long second before Rex moves, hands scrabbling for hold at the top and hauling himself – arms, elbows, shoulders, chest, then the rest of him – over to crumble in a shaking, sweaty pile. He only barely manages to worm his way up enough to give Bacara enough space to follow.

“You’re done.”

Rex tries to keep his limbs from curling in to himself. “I can-”

Bacara thunks a fist center of his chest. He doesn’t even put force behind it, just the weight of his hand is enough to knock Rex’s arms back out from under him, drop him down onto his back. He meets Rex eyes, raises one eyebrow. Rex twitches, flops back.

“I’m done,” he admits.

Bacara taps his fist twice more against Rex’s chest. “Tap out.” Rex nods and twists the wrist monitor they’ve all been given. A pair of med droids whir their way.

Bacara can let them take him too, he thinks, as Neyo’s thin, flyaway hair crests the edge of the climbing wall. He could tap out here, move on to the next stage as they get progressively harder. Neyo hauls himself up with just his arms, like a swimmer pulling themselves up the edge of a pool. There’s enough left to do, this assessment is going to get a lot worse before they let them rest.

Neyo steps past him, every motion victorious, every step _savage_. There’s something in his eyes, whatever it was that the Death Watch saw and knew they could take a soldier and make the monster in the dark.

Neyo wants to be last-off. He doesn’t want to be handed it. He has always been the very worst parts of Bacara’s excesses.

Bacara pushes up. That knee gets under him, holds, gives him one more stand.

Neyo grins. All teeth.

They run.


	2. Chapter 2

“ _I don’t train people on how to be broken. You’ll find that on your own, if it happens.”_

It turns out Bacara’s _almost_ right.

The exercise goes as expected, the cycles are predictable because hundreds of years of bastards have perfected the process until it _works_. The back and forth of physical and mental, doing exponentially worse in each with each cycle wears him deep in his soul. Words end up meaning very little and lines swim in front of his eyes.

He goes down on one of the run cycles. He’s not sure where on it. He remembers the doors back out to the course, light, the pound pound pound of boots against impact-cushioning surfaces and then nothing.

He had woken in a med bay bunk, 17 perched on the empty bunk next to him.

They never got to the rounds of questioning.

“ _It adds nothing to training leadership or reasoning skills,”_ 17 had continued, _“and might be actively detrimental to mental stability._ _It serves only to allow powerless people assert what little authority they have over a target unable to protest.”_

It looked like 17 had some strong opinions on that. Bacara had nodded and yessir’ed when appropriate. 17 had eventually dropped it.

The Journeyman Protectors had told him coming through a make-and-break, then the many other trainings design to strip him down to bone and basics made him stronger. He’d come to believe them over time. That’s proof enough, for Bacara. Maybe it’s not for everyone, maybe it isn’t something Bacara will ever inflict on his Marines, but he and Neyo both had come out the other side harder, colder, _better_. He and 17 will have to agree to disagree.

Bacara flips through a holopad of his results. It turns out, this exercise was designed to show them how far they could push and still be effective. How to recognize the signs they’ve pushed too far. This was only supposed to teach them things about themselves.

His Creative Reasoning is the first to go, Bacara notes, already dipping under High-Effective after the 40 hour mark and hitting Low-Ineffective by hour 80. Protocol Implementation stayed High almost the entire time but would waver on effectiveness immediately after exertion, times when Creative Reasoning actually got a small spike in effectiveness. Gross motor skills stayed up til hour 180, then plummeted in nearly a straight line until he dropped a day later. He’d lost Fine Motor Skills by Hour 110, Mid-Range Markmanship somewhere shortly after that. Logical Reasoning stayed high until his fine motor skills first started to deteriorate. He can only assume he had started to panic. He’d dropped right before the next round of Close-Range Marksmanship. Based on his Gross Motor Skills score when he’d dropped, no one would have risked giving him a blaster anyway.

His ability to Identify and Attempt Orders never once wavered, even when his ability to follow-through did.

Page after page after page, spelling out exactly who Commander Bacara is. It’s not comparative, there’s no rubric to measure against or any information on what percentile he fell in out of the class. This is just for him, to know what he can do. To know how far he can go.

He expects they’ll run this again at the end of ARC training, give them a final baseline of themselves after they’ve spent some time working on their stamina.

He and 17 might disagree on some things, but there’s no denying the man is brilliant. Bacara is already rethinking his routine to take advantage of this.

He gets a breath as a warning, and then something impacts dead center in his back. He’s still too slow to react; 17 has put him out for the next two days to recover. Arms wrap around his waist.

Neyo would have squeezed hard enough that his ribs creaked.

“Rex?” What Bacara gets in response couldn’t precisely be called _words_. Vocalizations, maybe, grumbled between his shoulder blades. He huffs.

“You know I don’t speak Standard,” he chides teasingly. He’d made the mistake once of saying Standard Mando’a sounded like slurring to him, since the Protector dialect preferred harder consonant sounds. Rex had bristled like a damp tooka.

He does the same now, or tries. He loosens his grip enough to thump Bacara in the stomach. It’s about as much force as, again, a damp tooka.

“Is there a point to this?” Bacara is honestly curious. It’s not a hug, really; Bacara’s learned Rex likes to be held close but this isn’t that. Bacara flips off the holopad screen, darkening his results. That’s for him alone. “If you’re tired-”

Rex grumbles. “Stop being a jerk. Just. Stay there.” He turns his face into Bacara’s back, presses hard and just breathes.

Carefully, Bacara covers Rex’s crossed arms with one hand, strokes gently from fingers to wrist up one side and down the other. Rex presses closer, seeking out what he needs.

Bacara hopes he’s finding it.

“I knocked Neyo off his feet in the first round,” Bacara starts. He keeps his voice low, his cadence even. He doesn’t know if Rex is listening, if his voice will help or not. He thinks Rex knows him well enough now to ask him to stop if it doesn’t. “He yowled like a Rancor on the pull. I’ll be spending months watching my back. His revenge is always unexpected and uniformly humiliating. Once…”

Slowly, Rex uncurls from his vice grip on Bacara, though his arms don’t drop. There’s less of desperation in the way he holds though, and his breathing evens.

Bacara slows, stops. Rex’s breaths are deep and regular and his arms are loose where his shoulders have dropped. Bacara huffs. “Tat1.” Another vocalization, one even less coherent and softer. “Tat’ka2, you’re asleep.”

“...m not.”

Stubborn little thing.

“Rex.”

“Not sleeping. Cmmdr Neyo was about to kick your ass.”

“He was _not_.” Hint received. Bacara picks the story back up, embellishing nothing whatsoever in his complete and utter victory over Neyo.

Rex sleeps. Bacara lets him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. (Journeyman Protector Dialect) Brother. Back  
> 2\. (Journeyman Protector Dialect) Little Brother. Back  
> 


End file.
